The underlying thesis of the article concerns how a more integrated and critical conceptualisation of the rural eco-economy can be built and framed in ways that stimulate a re-evaluation of its essential and multifunctional resource base. Secondly, in order to explore and elaborate these reconfigured relationships the article analyses selected case studies that begin to show the ways in which these new interconnections are being reconstructed and practiced. It is argued that these need to be considered together, adapted and integrated as building blocks into a wider sociological and ecological framework, and that one implication of this conceptual rebuilding will be a sociological focus upon how and by what means new and revised production–consumption chains, networks and relationships can become established both within rural areas and between them and their urban neighbours. These include aspects of ecological economics (EE), eco-system services (ESS) and ecological modernisation. Firstly, we consider some of the key differing and somewhat fragmented works in the literature that partially deal with this idea. This is the main objective of the article. One central element of this concerns the need to take forward the more specific concept of the rural eco-economy.

We can see here the emergence of a new role and potentiality for rural areas, especially at the regional level, which can be encapsulated in the emergence of a new rural development paradigm (see Marsden and Sonnino 2008 van der Ploeg and Marsden 2008).

In the context of growing resource scarcity (not least in foods fuels and energy) and the need to de-carbonise production and consumption systems, it is timely to reconsider the potentialities for combining the ecological with rural social and economic development in innovative ways. Rather, as we wish to explore here, these assumptions and arguments need overturning. These concerns do little to assist the rejuvenation of the rural economy more widely (see Lowe and Ward 2007) or to reduce the salience of the eco-economic paradox which typifies many peripheral rural areas that both hold potentially high ecological value and show persistently low levels of economic activity and welfare. There is still a view among many scholars and policy officials that the rural areas of the UK, for instance, are available to be controlled and regulated on behalf of the wider public – whether this concerns planning disputes, flood or pollution protection or the next variant of animal disease. These are significant questions, but in much of the debate they tend to become far too specific, fragmented and marginalised. But how do these vast tracts of rural Europe look from a new and revised lens of both the growing scarcity of carbon-based resources, on the one hand, and its continued exploitation and denial, on the other (see Marsden 2008)? Indeed, late carbon-based society has tended to render and define rural areas as post-modern consumption spaces places which individuals can choose for residence, business or play. How should rural economies deal with the challenges of continued peripherality, agricultural decline, low incomes, economic activity and expectations, and volatile and variable consumer demand? This is becoming an ever more serious question given the potential role of rural areas as spaces that need to contribute to adapting and mitigating climate change (for example, as carbon sinks, renewable energy sources or carbon energy offsets).ĭespite a growth in studies associated with widening the potentialities of rural areas to meet these challenges, we are a long way from understanding how and by what means rural areas can contribute to, and indeed, benefit from, a new relationship with the declining but contested carbon-based economy. Introduction: the eco-economy and rural development

Eco economix